The deepest, darkest fears of Florida Democrats were realized in full Tuesday night, when the party was rejected in virtually every race considered competitive, top to bottom. And not only are there now more Republicans than there were in Tallahassee a day ago, they are proudly more conservative.

If there is a living, breathing example of how toxic it was to have a "D" attached to your name on the ballot — or, conversely, how lucky it was to have an "R" —  it's Norm Roche.

Roche had run three previous times in Pinellas County, and been unsuccessful all three times. But this year he decided he'd rather switch than fight, becoming a Republican, and in so doing knocked off longtime Democrat Calvin Harris in a Pinellas County Commission race. That leaves Ken Welch as the only Democrat on the seven-member board.

But it's the governor's race you want to know about. Though nothing official is in, Scott as of 8:15 a.m. led by over 72,000 votes, a full percentage point (48.8%-47.8%) over Alex Sink.  Sink would have to cut that margin roughly in half to then qualify for an automatic machine recount. It doesn't look likely.

There were all types of problems in Palm Beach County which led to a delay in the vote count, which didn't finish until 4 a.m. Workers will resume counting ballots at 9 a.m., but I'm guessing those are just absentee ballots, since all the votes are supposedly in there.

Want to hear what the Democrats were up against? Frank Paruas, a 38-year-old Republican living in the Miami suburb of Kendall, told the Miami Herald, "`I wouldn't have voted for him if I had another Republican to choose from. I think Alex Sink isn't a bad person. But I just couldn't vote for anyone in the Democratic party right now.''

Nationally, the midterm 2010 election has been seen as a referendum on Barack Obama and Congressional Democrats. It was never as much about "change" of the status quo, as the past two election cycles have been, but "change the Democrats out of office."

That's because Florida voters apparently have decided they really dig what's been going on in their state government for the past few years, because they just doubled down on Republicans, increasing their numbers in the state Legislature, in the Cabinet, and in local County Commission races like those in Pinellas and Hillsborough counties.

In Hillsborough, the Commission will have a 5-2 GOP advantage, as local Democrats' dreams of liberalizing that joint died in the GOP tsunami Tuesday night. Former Tampa City Council members John Dingfelder and Linda Saul-Sena, two of the three progressive members of the Council for much of the past decade, met an early obstacle to their dreams of moving on up when late paperwork meant they had to go to court and spend thousands of dollars to defend themselves from being knocked off the ballot.

But in the end, their hard work didn't pay off. Republican Ken Hagan beat Saul-Sena by 10%, with independent Jim Hosler getting nearly 5% of the vote. In District One, previously held by moderate Republican Rose Ferlita, former legislator Sandy Murman was victorious over Dingfelder.

In the two most contested House races in two rare competitive districts, the GOP came out on top, with Tallahassee native Dana Young beating Democrat Stacy Frank decisively, despite the fact that Frank put in $134,000 of her own money to try to take the seat away from the Republicans (which Faye Culp had held for years). Across the Bay in Pinellas County, the race was closer, but the results were the same, as newcomer Jeff Brandes beat Democrat Bill Heller 52%-48%.

Heller told CL's Arielle Stevenson what the real deal was: fighting a race that wasn't about Pinellas County and Tallahassee, but Washington D.C. “You don’t really know what health care reform is, because most of it doesn’t kick in until 2014, and without the stimulus I don’t know what [state] this state would be in,” Heller said of the twin issues that have proven a dud with the majority of Americans.  “But I can tell you from being in Tallahassee that without those stimulus dollars we would have been in deep…doo-doo."

Another Pinellas County Democrat going down for the count was Janet Long in District 51, losing out to proud conservative Larry Ahern.

This article appears in Oct 28 – Nov 3, 2010.